Thursday April 20, 2017

Here comes the next smartphone gimmick. HTC has sent out an announcement for its next handset, codenamed "Ocean," which sports a feature dubbed "Edge Sense" that relies on touch sensors embedded in the frame around the phone. Presumably, users will be able to pull up menus and initiate other actions by squeezing its edges. Is this the best idea, when a lot of phones are trapped in tight hipster jeans nowadays?

It will reportedly sport a 5.5-inch display, 4GB to 6GB of RAM and 64GB to 128GB of storage, depending on the model. It won't have a headphone jack. More importantly, Ocean will apparently feature what HTC calls "Sense Touch," which gives you the power to summon menus and trigger various actions by squeezing and swiping on its edges. Those details are but rumors, though. You'll have to wait until May 16th to find out for sure. HTC will stream the event live from Taiwan on its website, starting at 2AM Eastern.